What the F(ilm)?! 7: All American Cine-Insanity from the Archive - Thur. July 3rd - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present What the F(ilm)?! 7: All-American Cine-insanity from the Archive, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This month we're featuring a cornucopia of insane-Americana with Di$ney war-propaganda, fire puppets, psychedelic animation, atomic scare films and even a naked marching band.  Walt Di$ney and Donald Duck help out in the war effort in The Spirit of '43 (1943), a bit of good old fashioned cartoon propaganda. Psychedelic animator Vince Collins produced the mind-bending animation 200 (1975) for the country's bicentennial, and it will still blow your eyeballs out today.  Kinestatic collage documentarian, Chuck Braverman tells the story of America in 3 minutes utilizing 1300 still images in American Time Capsule (1968).  Woody Allen and Jonathan Winters chime in on the age old question How Do They Make Hot Dog Buns? (1970) from Hot Dog, a short-lived bizarro educational program. With two camptastic slices of American cheese, Jerry Fairbanks brings us patriotic talking animals with Speaking of Animals - In Current Events (1940s) and a gorgeous technicolor road trip on a Greyhound Bus full of love with America for Me (1952). Atomic scare film Our Cities Must Fight (1951) wants you to stay in the city after the bomb drops; afterall, the nuclear fallout will dissipate in a couple of days. And since everybody loves a parade, we will be double-projecting the hilariously weird homoerotic short Nude Marching Band (1970s) with Parade, Parade (1973) the kitschy document of a small-town parade.  Plus, stripping for Uncle Sam with The Pretty Priorities and their patriotic burlesque soundie Take It Off (1942), a mini-tribute to the recently departed, the insane puppet anti-drug film Deciso 3003 (1982) featuring double-headed horny puppets by Julie Taymor and narrated by the late great Eli Wallach, and even more insane surprises!

Date: Thursday, July 3rd, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Oddball will be Closed Friday, July 4th

Happy Birthday America!  We will be closed this Friday, but we do hope you will enjoy your barbecues, fireworks and general patriotic merriment!  We will return next week with more marvelous gems from the collection.

Learn your Lesson...from the 1950s - An Old-Fashioned Shockucation - Fri. June 27 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn your Lesson...from the 1950s - An Old-Fashioned Shockucation, the sixteenth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month we're taking the way-way back machine to the 1950s to learn lessons in drinking and driving, bullying, cheating, sex, prejudice, child molestation, anger management and of course atomic fallout! Watch mice get drunk and drunks flip cars in the teen drunk driving cautionary tale None for the Road (1957).  The school scofflaw, Chick Allen, can't wait to sully the school carnival in The Bully (1951).  Chart the sexual development of two young people before their eventual marriage in The Social Sex Attitudes in Adolescence (1953), including segments on nocturnal emissions and homosexuality.  In What About Prejudice? (1959) everybody in class has it out for the faceless minority student for a variety of terrible reasons, until he steps up and saves a classmate's life and ends up in the hospital; let's hope it's not too late to change their attitudes.  Shockmeister Sid Davis want little boys to be on the look-out for the ever-present threat of pedophiles; you too should steer clear of The Dangerous Stranger (1950).  Nothing's more delightful than little children screaming at each other and throwing things, but we've got tips on controlling their volatile little tempers in Don't Get Angry (1953).  John Taylor thinks he's got it all figured out; copying answers off his friend's paper, but when word gets around, he loses all his friends and his seat on student council, all over a little Cheating (1952). And since it is the 1950s, learn how to react when our red enemies drop the big one on your town in the howlingly funny Pattern for Survival (1950), whatever you do, don't look at the light! Plus, shocking excerpts from shop-safety film It Didn't Have to Happen (1951), dolls on fire in Fire! Patty Learns What to Do (1951), and for the delusional: Facing Reality (1959).  Get here early for Ulcer at Work (1957) because we're already 60 years late to learn these lessons.

Date: Friday, June 27th, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Mid-Century Modern Animation - Thur. Jun 26 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Mid-Century Modern Animation, a program of stylish, clever, and award-winning cartoon shorts that are unmistakably mid-century with a color, feel and shape all their own. The mid-century modern style began in the late 1940s with John Hubley's UPA cartoon shorts in which he began straying away from the established realism of early animation, opting instead for a style of "limited animation" influenced by the art and design of the times, especially atomic-age design.  Detailed backgrounds gave way to minimalist shapes and blobs of colors, human characters became more prevalent over animals, faces became more stylized, and jazz music and hepcats were everywhere.  The other studios began to follow suit and soon the whole animation world was going "modern", even Di$ney.   John and Faith Hubley's  Adventures of an * (1956) features a stunning experimentation of imagery and a soundtrack from the great Benny Carter.  From UPA-the studio that started it all- we have four (count 'em four!) shorts including Hubley's last Magoo, the hilarious Fuddy Duddy Buddy (1951), 1940s racial equality primer The Brotherhood of Man (1946), a delightful adaptation of James Thurber's A Unicorn in the Garden (1953), and the short-tempered Pete Hothead (1952).  The Zagreb School of Animation produced some of the greatest atomic-age cartoons, including the first international short to win an Oscar; the delightfully anti-materialistic Ersatz (1961) from Dusan Vukotic; Vukotic's space-race charmer The Cow on the Moon (1958); and Zlatko Grgic's alien encounter Visit from Space (1955).  From England's Halas and Batchelor studio, there's the succinct and wryly witty The History of Cinema (1957). From the NFB, discover The Romance of Transportation in Canada (1952). Revel in the Technicolor mermaids of the Phillips-sponsored Pan-Tele-Tron (1957). And finally, from the behemoth - Di$ney - the Oscar-winning Toot Whistle Plunk Boom (1953), the Technicolor dazzler Blame it on the Samba (1948), and an excerpt from the future of car travel with Magic Highway USA (1958).  Early arrivals will learn from an atom-headed scientist in the atomic-age primer for A is for Atom (1953).

Date: Thursday, June 26th, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Strange Sinema 77: Sixties Synesthesia - Fri. June 20 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly screening of new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from Oddball Films’ vast collection of 16mm film prints. Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 films, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has complied his 77^th program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange Sinema 77: Sixties Synesthesia takes a heady sideways look at the multimedia art forms and kinetic uprisings of the tumultuous 60s featuring a vast array of evolutionary artists, cultural critics and eye-popping moving art. Films include segments from media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s Picnic in Space (1967), sublime ruminations with a background pop cultural pastiche and an electronic music score by Morton Subotnick; Art For Tomorrow (1969) an eye-popping exploration of experimental tech-oriented art incorporating early IBM computers, cybernetics, heart beat triggers, invisible art by magnetism all narrated by Walter Cronkite; the mesmerizing documentary Kinetic Art in Paris (1971), a viscerally challenging, kaleidoscopic homage to light, sound and motion featuring some of the world’s foremost kinetic artists; Art of the Sixties (1967), featuring the monumental soft sculptures of pop icon Claes Oldenburg, machine artist and animator Len Lye, Les Levine’s interactive environments, action painter provocateur Jackson Pollock and more. We bookend our program with revolutionary computer innovator John Whitney's demo reel Catalog (1961), created with his analog computer/film/camera machine he built from a WWII anti-aircraft gun sight and for the end of our program, his short Arabesque (1975), an oscillating color dance to the music of Persian rhythms created using early computer generated waveforms. Plus! Excerpts from Future Shock (1972) Narrated by Orson Welles and screened at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival this filmed version of Alvin Toffler’s much hailed book provides a glimpse of the collision between the present and the future. Future Shock shows how proliferating technology can create disturbance, dislocation and disorientation in human behavior.

Date: Friday, June 20th, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web:http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/2014/06/strange-sinema-77-sixties-synesthesia.html

The Twenties Aplenty: Saucy, Sassy, Silly. . . and How! - Thur. June 19 - 8PM

Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present The Twenties Aplenty: Saucy, Sassy, Silly . . . and How! The Jazz Age left us a bizarre record of itself and we’ll draw from newsreels, cartoons, stag curios, art film and comedy classics to get a little taste of that seemingly carefree time. The high-divers, whip-tricks and acrobatic feats of Oddball Stunts (1929) might seem antiquated, but they’re still jaw-dropping.  The Fleischer Brothers and Betty Boop keep the flapper alive in 1930’s Any Rags? Laurel and Hardy get caught with their pants down in Liberty (1929), one of their best silents. Are the title cards the best thing about old time smut? Come see a delicious antique Untitled Stag Film (1920s) and judge for yourself! Cartoon favorites like the Di$ney classic and the very first sync-sound animation Steamboat Willie (1928) and Rudolph Ising's infectious musical Smile Darn, Ya, Smile(1931) are just as fresh as they ever were! The audacious experimental The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1928) adds a dash of starkness to the proceedings with its subversive use of cutouts and miniatures.. And more tantalizing cinematic surprises. All films presented on real 16mm film. Homemade treats from the Kurator’s Kitchen included with admission. If you know your onions, you’ll be there!

Date: Thursday, June 19th, 2014 at 8:00 PM

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Admission: $10.00, RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or RSVP@oddballfilm.com

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Spectral Cinema: Film Frights for Friday the 13th - Fri. June 13 - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present  Spectral Cinema: Frightening Films for Friday the 13th with a selection of obscure horror shorts, haunting excerpts and spooky-kooky cartoons from the 1930s-1980s.  Anjelica Huston stars in the made-for-tv adaptation of William Faulkner's Victorian haunter A Rose for Emily (1983).  A man's conscience and a ghostly heartbeat won't allow him to get away with murder in a noiresque version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (1971).  Spencer Tracy imagines a Hell full of thousands of writhing bathing beauties in a haunting excerpt from Dante's Inferno (1935).  Betty Boop and Cab Calloway team up for one of the best (and spookiest) cartoons of the collection Minnie the Moocher (1932). Richard Burton narrates Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ghostly Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1977), brought to life by director John Ryan with a lucid style of stop-motion animation using layered paper cutouts. Watch the rise of the original queen of the undead in excerpts from James Whale's stunning Horror masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Interpretive dancing spirits tear up an Old West ghost town in an excerpt from John Byner's Something Else (1970), a short-lived and incredibly rare musical television program.   Plus, a crypt full of vintage Horror Trailers and more spooky surprises, spend your Friday the 13th right...with a fright!

Date: Friday, June 13th, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Will Vinton's Claymation Marvels - Thur. June 12 - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Will Vinton's Claymation Marvels, an evening celebrating the work of one of the most creative and entertaining animators of all time, Will Vinton.  The winner of an Academy Award, numerous television Emmys, and international animation awards numbering in the hundreds, Vinton used Claymation, a term he trademarked, to great effect in his early career and later bringing to life iconic advertising characters the California Raisins and M&Ms.  Vinton began experimenting with clay animation in college and his breakthrough short Closed Mondays (1974) garnered him international acclaim as well as an Academy Award.  Vinton explains his process – in his typically clever and metamorphic way – in Claymation (1978).  When a band of long-haired hippies begin to rock out in the middle of nature, the whole mountain (flora and fauna alike) gets in the groove in Mountain Music (1975).  The terrible lizards have never been more entertaining than in the pre-hysterical Dinosaur! (1987) and Vinton turns Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle (1978) into a psychedelic freak out!  Plus more claymation madness including Eliot Noyes Jr.'s Clay or the Origin of Species (1964) and original 1957 Gumby short In the Dough. 

Date: Thursday, June 12th, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

What the F(ilm)?! 6: Cine-Insanity from the Archive - Fri. Jun. 6th - 8PM

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present What the F(ilm)?! 6: Cine-insanity from the Archive an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This time the cine-psychosis includes a pubescent musical with 16-year-old Paula Abdul, baby olympics, giant talking bars of soap and  even singing harem dogs!  Featuring Junior High School (1978), a hilariously awkward musicalamity featuring a 16 year-old Paula Abdul and a cast of gangly teens and preteens singing and dancing about the "Itty Bitty Titty Committee", wearing a cup in gym class and having a boy-girl party.  It is one part toe-tapper, one part gut-cringer and all magic! Not played in it's entirety in over a year, this time you get every magical moment!  Did you ever wake up with a 6 foot tall bar of soap telling you about hygiene?  No?  Well, it's time to let Soapy the Germ Fighter (1951) set you straight on the path to cleanliness, even with his homoerotic undertones.  Toddlers and babies go for the gold in a strange variety of "sports" events in the Castle Films bizarro newsreel Babes in Sportland (1950s).  It wouldn't be a WTF program without some animal insanity and this month, we've got one randy pooch dreaming of a lovely harem of singing bitches in the Jerry Fairbanks Speaking of Animals short In a Harem (1951). And if you are looking to change careers, learn what it takes to make a career out of pantomime in the head-scratching, psychedelic creepfest I Am a Mime (1971).  Plus!  Bill Plympton's hilarious metamorphic cartoon Your Face (1987) and more surprises in store! (1987)!

Date: Friday, June 6th, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com

Visionaries of Dance - Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham - Thu. June 5th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Visionaries of Dance, a sumptuous evening of rare 16mm films dedicated to the innovators of the art of dance and the transformative nature of film to bring that art and beauty out in new and imaginative ways.  The grande dame of modern dance, Martha Graham, brings us into her studio as her dancers demonstrate the techniques created and imparted to them by the pioneering dancer and choreographer in A Dancer's World (1957).  Alvin Ailey forever changed the landscape of the dance world; view some of his most important works in the ultra-rare PBS documentary Alvin Ailey: Memories and Visions (1974).  The poetic Merce Cunningham (1964) documents the experimental choreographer, his imaginative interpretation of dance and theater as well as his collaborations with notable artists like Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage.  The brilliant Norman McLaren employs slow-motion to showcase the exacting precision of the Ballet Adagio (1972) with the help of two exquisite dancers.  And for a little light animated entertainment; the mid-century UPA cartoon Ballet Oop! (1954) takes us through the exhausting routine of a class of young ballerinas and their teacher Miss Placement. It is a night of beauty, movement, and artistry that may inspire you to get out of your seat and move your feet! 

Date: Thursday, June 5th, 2014 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco

Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117

Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com